from left: Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.
Ran on: 06-03-2011
Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt, top, are the parents of three boys in &quo;Tree of Life.&quo;
Ran on: 06-19-2011
Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt in &quo;The Tree of Life&quo;: ambitious but long. less

from left: Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.
Ran on: 06-03-2011
Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt, top, are the parents of three boys in &quo;Tree of Life.&quo;
Ran on: 06-19-2011
Jessica ... more

Photo: Merie Wallace, 2011 Twentieth Century Fox

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Brad Pitt in the Tree of Life.

Brad Pitt in the Tree of Life.

Photo: Merie Wallace, 2011 Twentieth Century Fox

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Sean Penn in The Tree of Life.

Sean Penn in The Tree of Life.

Photo: Merie Wallace, 2011 Twentieth Century Fox

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Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken in The Tree of Life.

Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken in The Tree of Life.

Photo: Merie Wallace, Twentieth Century Fox

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In "The Tree of Life," Brad Pitt plays Mr. O'Brien, a strict father to three boys who alternately fear and are in awe of him. Director Terrence Malick cast nonprofessional kids to play the O'Brien boys and filmed their scenes in a spontaneous, immersive style. (Saturday advance.) Illustrates FILM-PITT-ADV28 (category e), by Ann Hornaday (c), 2011, The Washington Post. Moved Thursday, May 26, 2011. (MUST CREDIT: Twentieth Century Fox photo by Merie Wallace) less

In "The Tree of Life," Brad Pitt plays Mr. O'Brien, a strict father to three boys who alternately fear and are in awe of him. Director Terrence Malick cast nonprofessional kids to play the O'Brien boys and ... more

The Tree of Life

If someone gave you, as a gift, a bag of diamonds and rocks, you would not see it as "a mixed bag." You would see it as a bag of diamonds with some rocks that can be easily pushed aside, and you would be happy to be rich. In the same way, Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is at times trying and perplexing, but it also contains some of the most psychologically insightful and ecstatic filmmaking imaginable.

Malick shows you the world that you know, but he shows it in such a fever that you see it, not differently, but completely. It's a vision so alive to the mystery in everything that the simple depiction of a man walking into an office building feels like a feast of limitless possibility and geometric variety. To see "The Tree of Life" is to wish you could go through life seeing things in this way. There would be no fear of death because each moment would be so full as to contain lifetimes.

From the first moments, Malick presents his film as a contrast between two ways of understanding human existence. There is the way of nature, which sees only struggle and looks for reasons to be unhappy, and there is the way of grace, which is in touch with love and the broad movements of the universe. The way of nature is embodied by Brad Pitt as a hard-charging husband and father - it's a lovely performance from Pitt, whose control-freak facade never completely hides the vulnerability motivating it. Jessica Chastain, as his wife, embodies the way of grace. They live with their three children in a Texas suburb in the 1950s and are seen through the memory of their eldest son, Jack (Sean Penn), looking back from the present.

As in "The New World," voice-over narration, to the accompaniment of subjective shots of trees and sky, gives us the characters' inner thoughts. These produce a unique effect. It's as if we're seeing a dream of the past and hearing mental vibrations that, either randomly or because of their particular strength, happened to survive time. The feeling is one of privilege, to be picking up on precious currents of consciousness, seemingly lost to the world.

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At its most basic, "The Tree of Life" vividly replicates, in cinematic terms, the way we remember. There are general memories, moods and sensations, and then there are incidents and bits of conversation that are recalled with absolute present-tense lucidity. And so the incidents of voice-over are interspersed with straightforward scenes showing this 1950s family. Malick is trying to give us life as it is consciously experienced, the unceasing inner monologue and its interplay with the outside environment, the thoughts of the past mixing with the suspended and yet always available present.

The ambition behind such an attempt is enormous, and Malick's success is complete. But he doesn't stop there. In "The Tree of Life" he doesn't only want to show what life and consciousness feel like. He wants to capture the nature of life - what life is. To this end, he films waterfalls and mountains, gives us long minutes of churning, multi-colored ooze floating in space, and even includes a brief dinosaur interlude. He is trying to give us the mind of God. No, more than that. He is trying to film God.

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When he stays within the multiple minds of his various characters, Malick is working here at the level of genius. His handheld camera hovers with a sense of impending revelation. The beauty is beyond description. But when he ventures into explorations of the universe and its origins, the work becomes general and less interesting, liked warmed-over Kubrick.

Still, there is little doubt that "The Tree of Life" will stand as the cinematic achievement of the year.